Spotify crowd-sources free labour from its 160 million users
Spotify crowd-sources free labour, get “Line-In.”
Behind the sweet sounds of music lies the back-end metadata that holds important information like rights, track names, aliases, tags and external links…
For a company like Spotify, this information is of upmost importance with the disorganisation thereof leading the company down the slippery slopes of legal battles and lawsuits because rights are missing from a file or unlicensed material pops out with rights-holders unpaid.
For the company who is ever-expanding, including going live in South Africa this week, such errors are a no-go and can really stifle their progress especially if they want to go public.
In a stroke of genius, they have come up with a plan to enlist the help of their 160 million users.
Users, Line-In
Spotify hopes to enlist users in engaging in a new feature called Line-In, where they will be able to suggest edits and additions to its trove of metadata.
In the announcement, made on Monday the 12th, Spotify said:
“By experimenting with this tool, we hope to better understand how Spotify listeners interpret music, so that we can improve experiences for both listeners and artists. Some of the data categories listeners are invited to make suggestions for include: explicitness, genre, aliases, languages, mood, tags, artist roles, and external URLs.”
What makes this plan so genius is that although users don’t get paid for their ‘work,’ the suggestions they make will be part of improving Spotify and making their listening experience smoother.
In return, Spotify crowd-sources free labour and the opportunity to draw its community deeper.
Sourced
